The present invention relates to a musical tone generating apparatus for reading out waveform data stored in a digital memory to generate a musical tone using the software. The present invention also relates to a musical tone generating apparatus for processing waveform data inputted in real time using the software. In particular, the invention relates to a musical tone generating apparatus capable of applying a filter process, a pitch process or a scratch process to the generated musical tones while a number of the musical tones is reduced as compared to normal generation or reproduction of the musical tones. Further, the present invention relates to a musical tone generating apparatus capable of achieving a scratch effect in a pseudo fashion.
A software sound source has been known, wherein waveform data sampled from original musical tones is stored in a storage device in advance. The stored waveform data is read out by a software or program in response to operation of a manual implement. However, the conventional software sound source is functionally fixed and therefore has rather limited applications and poor performance. In recent years, a high performance sound source has been demanded, which can impart various effects such as a digital tone color filter process and a scratch effect to a musical tone. Scratch is originally a technique for producing a special effect tone by forcibly moving an analog record disk by hand while the record disk is driven on a turntable, so as to change a replaying speed irregularly. Conventionally, an analog record disk is used to impart the scratch effect. There has been no digital musical tone generating apparatus which realizes such a scratch effect.